Max Collins - Ask Not

“Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler,” I said.

He smiled in surprise and really looked at me for the first time. “Flo told you?”

“No,” I said.

That stopped his incessant chatter, which was what I’d hoped it would do, whether I’d guessed right or wrong.

“Frank,” I said, “I know this is difficult. But I want you to tell me what happened, in as much detail as you can manage. As much you can stand.”

We sat in silence for perhaps thirty seconds.

“I didn’t really see her the night before,” he said finally, with a frustrated shrug. The dark unblinking eyes took on a desperate cast. “Can I get you something to drink?”

“No thanks.”

Felton got up and, moving more side to side than straight ahead, went over to a liquor cabinet converted from an old wooden highboy icebox, painted black, of course. He was perhaps five nine, and looked more bloated than overweight. He poured himself several fingers of Johnnie Walker and returned, not sitting, though, standing before me, feet planted but weaving just slightly.

“You’ll have to forgive me, Nate,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve stopped drinking since this happened.”

I didn’t think he’d stopped drinking since 1948, but at least right now he had a damn good excuse to drown himself in booze and sorrow.

“You were friends with Florrie Mae. You know about... us. Right? Right. You know how we didn’t, well, stand in the way of each other’s extracurricular activities. We just didn’t... flaunt it at each other. Tried not to embarrass each other.”

“They’re calling it ‘open marriage,’ these days. You were one of the first couples I ever knew who so indulged.”

His shrug was as overly elaborate as the house. “Well, we were grown-ups, Nate. We still loved each other, we were pals, and we... had our romantic moments, even after things cooled. I mean, we must have loved each other, right? We married each other often enough!”

“The night before she died, Frank. Tell me about that.”

“The last time I saw her was with Julian Rusk, her hairdresser — he always comes here Sunday afternoon, to do her hair at home, before the show. Late afternoon. I said... break a leg, and she just... smiled and nodded. I rarely went to the broadcast with her and this was no exception. She and one of her producers went to P.J. Clarke’s for a quick drink, after.”

“Was that out of the ordinary?”

“No, no quite the opposite. From there she took her limousine — CBS provided that — to the piano bar at the Regency. Going there for cocktails was also customary — in fact, the show’s staff always invited the contestants to join them and usually some of the stars, depending on who was available or anyway in the mood.”

“What time did she get home?”

“I don’t really know, Nate. I was in bed already. No one else was in the house — the servants don’t sleep in, and our kids are in boarding school. Well, they’re home now, but... anyway, she was here at 2:20, that much I can tell you.”

“Did you check with the limo driver about what time he brought her back?”

“I did. She sent him home when he dropped her at the Regency.”

Maybe she had a date.

“If you didn’t see her, Frank, why are you so sure she was home at 2:20?”

“She called Western Union at that time and had a messenger come pick up her column. She probably had most of it written already, and made a few finishing touches, after getting back from the Regency bar. Her last column.”

He sat back down next to me, leaned an elbow on a knee, and covered his face with a hand.

I gave him a few moments, then asked, “You said you’d already gone to bed. Did she join you, and in the morning, you...?”

He shook his head. “No. At times we didn’t sleep together. I’m afraid I snore, and Florrie Mae worked all hours. I have a bedroom on the fourth floor, Florrie Mae has a little bed in her office on the fifth. But she was found in the bedroom we share, the master bedroom. That’s why I brought you to the Black Room, Nate — not out of any gallows sense of humor... though this is certainly a room where we had wonderful times.” He pointed off to the right. “She was found in the bedroom just off of here...”

From the Black Room we entered a blizzard of white — white walls, white furnishings with gold accents and antique brass hardware, though red relieved the white by way of a Florentine design on the spread of the king-sized bed, and a red tufted velvet headboard with matching slipper chair.

I stepped into the room, but Felton stayed in the doorway, as if the parquet floor was one big trapdoor waiting to be sprung on him.

He said quietly, “That’s where she was found. Not by me. By Rusk, the hairdresser. He had an appointment to do her hair at nine A.M. She had a TV show to tape at eleven, guesting on To Tell the Truth. She was sitting up, a book in her lap — Seven Days in May — must have fallen asleep reading.”

“And died in her sleep.”

“Yes. There was no sign of any kind of disturbance, not even rumpled covers. So it must have been peaceful. She just slipped... slipped away...”

“Do we know the cause of death?”

“It was the booze and pills, Nate. You know that.”

“Too early for an opinion from the coroner?”

“Not officially, but Dr. Luke tells me it’s ‘the effects of a combination of alcohol and barbiturates.’”

Booze and pills.

I walked to the white nightstand. “Any pill bottles? Any kind of bottles?”

“Seconal, about half of her prescription still there. A glass of gin and tonic, about... a third of it left. She’d have to get up and go out into the other room for a refill.”

“Will there be an inquest?”

“No, thank God. The doctor said Flo’s death will be labeled ‘circumstances undetermined.’”

“That’s a common enough designation, but it leaves the door open for speculation.”

“But she wasn’t depressed, Nate!” He was assuming I meant suicide, and indeed there were rumors of that reported in the press.

“This talk of suicide,” he said in a rush of words, “it pisses me off, really pisses me off royal. She was energized about her book for Bennett, that Kennedy thing, she was happy with her life, she...”

She had a new man in her life. He had to know that. But couldn’t bring himself to say it.

“Show me her office, would you, Frank?”

On the way up the front stairs, I said, “How much do you know about the Kennedy book?”

“Just that she felt confident her reporting would make a real difference. She bragged, she was cocky — said she was going to ‘blow the case wide open.’”

“You didn’t talk specifics?”

“No. She talked with that young man from Indiana who’s been assisting her. But otherwise she was protective, even... secretive. She said the more I knew, the more dangerous it was for me.”

“She wasn’t kidding. You did know what we were investigating in Dallas, Frank? The suspicious deaths of assassination witnesses?”

“That I did gather.”

Her office on the fifth floor, with its single bed and desk in a corner with a typewriter, looked like the room of a teenaged girl, albeit a wealthy one — floral-brocade wallpaper, chartreuse carpet, embroidered organdy curtains tied back with taffeta bows. The only thing missing was the stuffed animals.

Frank stood beside me in the surprisingly small space. “This was her sanctuary,” he said. “She called it the Ebb. As in ebb and flow? It’s rare for me to set foot in here.”

“Oh?”

“Rare for anyone but her to be in here.”

The reddish face swung suddenly to me and he was close enough for it to be uncomfortable, his dark glazed eyes locking on me, like tics on a greyhound.